English Access Islands

The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 in England was a well intentioned piece of legislation designed to increase the amount of land to which the public had access. These access rights were negotiated with and agreed by landowners, creating a number of Open Access Areas across the country. These can be seen on the 1 to 25,000 Ordnance Survey map as areas bounded by a thick orange line.
However, the work was time consuming and costly. Unsurprisingly it was never finished and as a result, whilst we have many wonderful Open Access Areas, a large number were left with no way to reach them on public rights of way. They were islands surrounded by private land which means that to reach them requires the public to commit a trespass.
On Sunday 25 February 2024, Paul Timlett from the Hidden Wiltshire team set out to visit two local Access Islands to see how easy it would be to reach them. It was an interesting experiment.

[@colinmcnally5931]

Beautiful countryside

[@thebeatentrack156]

Its crazy, there are so many examples of these islands, thank you for highlighting the problem 😊

[@hedleythorne]

I do also note that most OAA's are the bits that aren't of use to landowners (e.g. steep). Not a problem, just an observation.